This shoot focuses on Farid, a man channeling Frida Kahlo’s male alter ego, through all the graft present in the artist when it came to blurring the lines between her identifying as a man or a woman.

Frida constantly rebelled against pre-set ideals of what it meant to be feminine, and stayed true to the way she felt, so as not to fall behind due to her assigned gender. Despite her usage of floral crowns and intense make-up, Frida embodied the boy in her by persevering in her daring artistic expression and turbulent career, and by being indifferent to physical expectations by letting her body hair grow and employing androgynous attire and mannerisms.

Here, the camera follows Farid on a day out in Amman; he wanders through the city to grab cheap eats at Abu Jbara and sip on a strawberry milkshake at McDonald’s. Then, to indulge further in his hedonistic ways, he goes to the barbershop to trim his beard and accentuate details of his male dominated persona with snippets of inspiration from Kahlo’s more delicate facets.

A tender fury lies beneath the indecision to be either one gender or the other. One releases an acute frustration when one expresses him, her or themselves through idiosyncratic attempts to be as true to one’s self as humanly possible.

Related Posts

Discrete? Subscribe to My.Kali via Email

My.Kali understand that some individuals/groups value their privacy and cannot follow us via social media, therefore, you can subscribe to My.Kali magazine and receive notifications of new posts by email. Just enter your email address below: